


Hello, Dr. Doomer!

by CookieCatSU



Series: The Bub Chronicles [8]
Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Angst, Bubby helps, Canon - Video Game, Descartes is misquoted, Existential Crises, Life is a lie!, M/M, My dude Dr. Coomer is confused, Nothing's real and that's terrifying, Video Game Mechanics, and angry, eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27710722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookieCatSU/pseuds/CookieCatSU
Summary: "You" he said, "are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain"- Emilie Autumn----------------------------Dr. Coomer sees the big NOTHING™. A big existential crisis is sure to follow. Probably. Definitely.
Relationships: Bubby/Dr. Coomer (Half-Life)
Series: The Bub Chronicles [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825966
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	Hello, Dr. Doomer!

Dr. Coomer gets the distinct impression that he's seeing something he's not supposed to see, that he's seeing something no one's _ever_ supposed to see.

Just pitch black darkness for miles. Empty void.

It's terrifying.

He can see the canyons he's left behind, so far below him now. The structure sits alone, in a sea of nothingness. He sees the red sand, shifting, and can glimpse out broken, staticky pixels fraying outwards from the farthest edges.

Pixels. Pixels?

He's rising further, and his skin is burning (like electricity, coursing beneath, frying him from the outside in, inside out). The jagged, sharp, coarse, jutting lines of the singular, broken canyon are clawing upwards to reclaim him, engulfing him in red hot surface code.

_Entity detected, outside play area. Reconfiguring._

He's pulled apart.

Put back together, right where he started.

But nowhere near the same.

He shakes where he stands.

* * *

"There's nothing out there!" He shouts, as soon as he's back on (solid?) ground.

"None of this is real. Is it?"

They're all just strings of code. Binary. An apparition formed for the sake of someone else's amusement.

Ten seconds ago he was nothing, and ten minutes from now he will still be nothing.

So why does he have memories, of a past that did not happen, that couldn't have possibly occurred. Memories of Bubby, and Tommy, and all his fellow scientists, and scientific breakthroughs sure to be remembered for the ages. Memories of bloodied knuckles, scraped knees, muddied elbows.

Memories, of losing a beloved specimen he'd cultivated for months, of discovering his first planet, of learning and prospering and growing.

 _He's real,_ he cries out, into the recesses of his mind (code, code, just lines of code), but something about the statement, the assurance, just rings hollow now.

When he looks closely at the shadowy corners of the corridors, he can see the pixels and bits that make up the bricks. He notices when Bubby's shoe collides with the floor and goes right through it in a glitchy spastic motion- where he had not before. 

Everything was of too sharp lines and fuzzy blurred graphics, and he wonders when that became normal.

He was a real person, he'd been sure. A real person with real feelings. He went to college. Gained his doctorate. Graduated with eyes wide open and gaze turned to the future.

He had a life. Family. Friends.

Was that all fake too?

* * *

They are blissfully ignorant.

Dr. Coomer is glad for that. He couldn't possibly bear to lay upon them the true, abject horror of his latest discovery.

So, besides that first outburst, spurred on by the sudden, gripping panic caused by the sight of pure, empty nothingness, Dr. Coomer resolves to keep it to himself.

They talk, and laugh, and Dr. Coomer smiles as well, laughs, as if nothing is wrong, but there's still that nagging discomfort in the back of his mind. No. At the forefront.

Bubby places his head atop his shoulder with an over dramatic sigh, threading their hands together, squeezing ever so faintly, in a way meant to be reassuring. He can see the strained quirk of Coomer's mouth, can see how on edge he is.

Dr. Coomer doesn't bother to return the gesture.

What's the point, anyway, if they're just figments?

* * *

Gordon's expression, when he gazes upon him, is apologetic. Sympathetic.

Pitying.

Dr. Coomer at once is thankful for it, for his concern, and hates him for it.

It serves as confirmation, of a fear he never realized he had until it was staring him full in the face.

He's trapped, and he hates it.

* * *

It's not fair, Coomer thinks.

Tommy trembles with the gun in his hand, hand shaking, eyes wet. When the trigger suddenly slips, and the bullet snaps through the air, piercing into the alien beast's skull, they all gasp.

Tommy had never handled a gun before. Not once ever.

The creature trembles, and falls to its knees where it stands.

"Good job, butterfingers!" Bubby exclaims, encouraging as he can be, patting him hard on the back.

Tommy remains silent, still shaking like a leaf.

There's a roiling wave of horror, disgust, that washes over Dr. Coomer. He wonders where it came from, and why he's just now experiencing it.

Coomer's brows furrow, and his hands clench.

"How were you able to do that?" He asks, eyes wide, tone as cheerful as ever: it's taut though, taut and strained and fake (but Tommy _needs_ this, and he needs this, and everyone needs this). 

"I don't know. I uh… I couldn't do that before. It's like something, something took over my body"

He stares at the creature, with the bullet hole between its eyes. He looks a little nauseous, gaze wide and wet. Tears well in his eyes, and he curls up in a ball, shoulders shaking.

"I don't know what happened! I didn't want to do that… I don't _want_ to hurt anyone or anything"

Coomer knows what happened. They're all just pawns, free to be used wherever the program needs them.

Tommy needed to be a killer, so a killer he would be.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Coomer" Tommy wails, gripping onto Harold's lab coat, so much like the little boy they'd taken in from amongst the trash. There's snot all over Dr. Coomer's shoulder, "I'm so sorry"

Harold pats his back, and murmurs reassurances.

"It's not your fault" He says, because it isn't, and Tommy shouldn't think it is… and it isn't _fair_.

Tommy cries most of that night.

* * *

Sometimes he says things he had not meant to. He does things he had not meant to.

"Hello, Gordon" He says, for the 37th time in a ten minute period. His mouth snaps shut, and he gapes for the few, short seconds he's allowed.

Then he's smiling once more, back to talking about Playcoins, and making awfully inaccurate predictions of their arrival time at the Lambda Labs- 2 hours becomes 4 hours, which becomes 3 days and then 10 minutes- but he doesn't forget.

His mouth moves to form words so foreign they cut on the way out. Spewing out without his behest. Without his permission. He remembers. 

Like a puppet hanging on twirling strings, he sings whatever tune he's told.

It's infuriating.

* * *

"None of this is real, Bubby" He's misty eyed, voice warbling, as he looks out at the sunset. The colors bleed like… well, he wants to say something poetic, but they bleed like graphics on a computer monitor, because that's what they are… which is still such a difficult reality to grapple with.

He can't come to grips with it. It seems so impossible, that the sky he's looking at isn't real, and the colors he's seeing, influenced by the refraction of the particles in the atmosphere, were never really there, and that even the gaze he's looking upon them with, isn't either.

"What?" Bubby asks, so clearly confused. 

Of course. Coomer isn't making much sense, because Bubby doesn't know about the truth he stumbled upon, and doesn't understand (can he understand, can anyone understand something so absurd?).

Dr. Coomer needs to tell someone. He squeezes Bubby's hand, where it sits clasped in his. Bubby perks up at that, eyebrows raised, attention now entirely focused on Coomer, because this was _serious_.

"The world we're living in… me, you, Black Mesa, none of it is real"

"So, what?" 

"I, what?"

"So what?" Bubby sniffs, kicking his legs against the side of the canyon face. Dust and bits of rust colored pebble shower from the impact points. Binary Spatter. "Why does it matter?"

"It's all just code. We're not real people. I can't- I don't, I don't know how to explain this so you'll _understand-_ "

Bubby should be horrified. Why isn't he horrified? Why isn't he overcome with the same paralyzing, existential dread that's been dogging Dr. Coomer for weeks?

Perhaps he just needs to explain more. He opens his mouth to do just that, but is distracted by the expression on Bubby's face. He looks miffed.

Bubby looks away, jaw clenched tight as a springboard.

"People have been telling me what makes me real all my life. Well screw that"

"That's different"

"The fuck. How so?" Coomer can't answer that. Bubby continues without pause, "Who's to say that this isn't the real world, and whatever screwy bullshit they have out there is the fake"

"That doesn't make sense-"

"You see this" He indicates their interlocked fingers, "You see that" He points to the sky, "It's real because we say it is. It doesn't matter what anybody else says. I don't care if the universe were to come down here to dispute it, I'll fight them too! Every last binary star and fucking icey ass comet"

A laugh bubbles out of Dr. Coomer, still wet and miserable, cracked around the edges, but more genuine than anything that's come out of him in days.

"Even if everything else is fake, I'm real. Your real. This, is real"

There's quiet, for a few precious seconds. Harold gazes up at the sunset, simmering into darkness ever so slowly, all ones turned to zeroes, and feels the slightest bit less afraid, as he regards it. He has Bubby, after all.

"You feel, you think-"

"-therefore you are"

Bubby nods. "You taught me that one"

"I saw it too" Bubby says, after a minute or so, so quiet Dr. Coomer can hardly hear him.

"What?"

"The darkness, the nothing, that you've been talking about. I saw it too. When I was on that rocket, I saw that vast emptiness, I saw there weren't any stars, and I saw that our world was very, very small… It scared me. But, and I know this'll sound ridiculous and cheesy and stupid" He exhaled sharply, "but I thought of you, and then I wasn't nearly so frightened. Cause you and I, we can get through anything"

"Bubby!" Coomer smiles, "How sweet!"

Bubby grins, clearly quite proud of himself.

"Uh-huh. Honestly, the universe can go fuck itself, for all I care. Screw the planets"

"Oh, you're a naughty, naughty boy, Bubby"

The stars are starting to peek out. They're misshapen, almost lopsided, poorly cut holes in a canvas of darkness, but Coomer can't find it in himself to care.

He and Bubby trace constellations that probably didn't actually exist, spread bare before them, his head leant against Bubby's shoulder… and nothing around them is real, per say, except their togetherness.

But that's enough.


End file.
